An interview with Jim Lamb.
Go through an inconspicuous door, climb some quite steep stairs, and you
find yourself in the office of the Beneficiaries' Advisory Service - a
spacious and welcoming office.
Until I talked to Jim Lamb, manager of the service,
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How did Jim become involved in this work?
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I was unaware of the
precise nature of the services offered. As Jim talked I gained a picture
of how the Service developed. the types of problems beneficiaries wanted to
discuss and the help that is offered them - first a listening ear and then
advice on their rights within the law and advocacy in having their concerns
heard and their grievances addressed.
How did Jim become involved in this work?
In the late 1980s he became redundant after changes in the New Zealand
Railways. Here his work in the Union Movement gave him an analysis of
where things were heading. It also gave a clear indication that what was
being done supposedly 'in the public interest' was not, as was often
asserted, 'good for the people of New Zealand'.
Jim became deeply involved in the work of the Unemployed Movement. At that
time there were forty to fifty groups nationwide, and they were well enough
researched to meet six monthly somewhere in the country. The biggest
meetings would have several hundred people present. It was one of the
strongest unemployed movements in the world - well organised and rife with
internal conflicts (which displayed the diversity of the issues).
The first national activity in which Jim was involved was a week-long
meeting in Wellington culminating in a march on Parliament of about 5000
people.
Regrettably the time when the unemployed movement disintegrated was the
time when it really became necessary. There had been a change in the
nature of unemployment since the early eighties. In 1982 the view was
expressed that if the number of unemployed reached 80.000 society would
disintegrate. In fact the society we knew in 1980 has now gone. Until
1988 there were people unemployed, but there was a reasonably supportive
benefit system which met most of their major needs and most people
experienced short-term unemployment. People could go from one relatively
well-paid job and after a few months find another.
In the late eighties the average period of unemployment became much longer
and the jobs that people found were usually low-paid. This meant that they
had been able to save very little to assist them during the period without
jobs. Many people had constant poverty problems. By 1991 the average
period of unemployment was two years.
Jim describes his background as coming from "the Golden Age" of the
unemployed movement through to 1991. He recalls that in 1989 and 1990
Unemployed Rights would have some sort of protest every month to draw
attention to an issue affecting the unemployed.
December 17 1991 - Benefit Cuts
When this news was announced there were around four hundred people ready to
protest. It was a period of intense activity when the organisers of
Unemployed Rights moved from being background workers to being key figures
communicating with the media and speaking to groups around the country.
This put immense pressure on them and made untenable demands on some. They
were working fifteen to sixteen hours a day and at the same time coping
with the difficulties of living on a reduced benefit.
As there was very little employment available the Employment Service and
Income Support were not pushing people to take jobs at this time. This
meant that people adjusted to a lifestyle living off the benefit. There is
still only limited employment and even less for people who are
"disadvantaged" for admission to the work force - by age, gender, child
care.
By 1992 many of the people in Unemployed Rights were exhausted. The group
was blacklisted for funding because it had a political perspective,
personal pressures came from the increased difficulty of living on a
benefit, and within a few months the whole movement disintegrated. What
happened in the movement was a fair indicator of what happened to people in
general. The end of the movement reflected the low morale of most
unemployed people.
Two strands emerge
With the disintegration of most groups in 1992 two strands of thinking
emerged. Until 1992 the local group had operated as a totally open
collective with a weekly meeting and consensus decision making. Some felt
strongly that this pattern should continue. It worked well, especially on
short term issues. Working on long term strategic goals was more
difficult. Acceptance of anyone unemployed who came and offered time was
regarded as of paramount importance.
Others felt a need for more organisation. From the latter view came the
People's Centre in Auckland which ran a medical centre, a business training
centre and numerous other services, including advocacy. This Centre
accessed a large fund of startup capital and continued handling large
amounts of money, so financial accountability was essential.
In Wellington a similar concept was developed, with a large amount of
starting capital.
Decision making in Christchurch
Jim interviewed the people who had developed the North Island centres.
In the Wellington inner city area there were virtually no services for low
income people until the People's Centre was established. Services there
catered for those who worked there and returned to homes in the suburbs at
night.
In Christchurch the startup capital for a service to the unemployed was
only $500. The rooms used by the Unemployed Rights Movement were directly
over the Trade Union Medical Centre which offered treatment at reasonable
fees. Christchurch has a large number of social services.
The Christchurch Beneficiary Advisory Services
What Christchurch beneficiaries needed was advocacy which had always been
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Jim listens to a client's problems
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part of the work of Unemployed Rights. During 1993 Jim gathered together a
group of people who were on benefits themselves and could work as advocates
for beneficiaries. The openness of the group was retained, but there was
a clear aim and the primary goals were clearly defined.
The focus on advocacy has met a real need. This work is being done by
groups throughout the country in spite of pressures to close the groups
down. The Service has found that there is a huge gap between what Income
Support is doing in daily practice and what is actually written in the law.
Action as a group is much more effective than individual appeals. The
group has acquired a deep knowledge of welfare law which is used to
represent the claims of beneficiaries.
Staff of the Service
The office staff are people who have been deemed 'unemployable', but after
experience and training in the centre most are able to apply for and obtain
other work.
'Benefit Fraud'
The Centre is constantly dealing with cases related to so-called 'benefit
fraud'. There are about 110,000 investigations conducted by Income Support
every year. Sixty to seventy thousand of these are of women on the
Domestic Purposes Benefit to check whether or not they are in marriage-type
relationships. People who have not committed fraud are at times penalised
and have to pay back huge sums through reductions in their benefit even
though they are not guilty. These people require an advocate to fight
their cause.
For many people the fact of being poor and on a benefit means constant
humiliation and petty control. Beneficiaries often have to submit to small
scale victimisation and invasions of their privacy if they are to keep
their benefit. The suggestion that parents be deprived of their benefit if
they do not have their children immunised is an example of this. Similarly
there is an attempt to limit the use of complementary health procedures,
even if recommended by a general practitioner.
They have no capital to engage a lawyer to fight for their rights, and
their confidence is at such a low ebb that they need the supportive
environment of the Centre and its staff to help them through the appeal
procedure.
The work of the Centre is to right these injustices by providing advocates
to take the case through an appeal procedure.
Jim's view of the future
"While we have to acknowledge the systems that run society we use them only
as an interim step because for effective change new systems need to be
developed. However, working towards solutions in a constantly changing
economic environment is a long-term process."
He keeps the core philosophy in place while facilitating a constantly
changing working environment, with different group dynamics year by year as
groups change. The Beneficiaries Advisory Service reflects what is
actually happening in the community through the responsive nature of the
groups dealing with issues and problems.
What B.A.S. challenges is the blame placed on unemployed people for
problems which result from the economic system and are not their fault.
While some money comes from the general funding agencies it is a constant
struggle to survive. This is mainly because B.A.S. regularly challenges
preconceptions in the status quo. Consistent support comes from the
Lotteries Board, the Christchurch City Council, Trustbank and the Community
Organisations Grants Scheme. Increasingly the Government is attempting to
have any community development or social service purely subsumed to their
political interests, rather than to the needs of people.
There has always been a group marginalised by society, but the size of the
group has been increasing markedly in the last five years. This means that
there is an ever-increasing need for the work of the Beneficiaries Advisory
Service.
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